Today's News

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Scientists successfully tested a new nuclear reactor in Nevada that could power future trips to outer space.

NASA and the Department of Energy on Wednesday announced the Kilopower fission reactor performed better than expected during a 28-hour, full-power test completed last month inside a vacuum chamber at the Nevada National Security Site, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported .

"Really everything ran perfectly during the test," said Kilopower lead engineer Marc Gibson.

The test marked the end of five months of work on the "space-qualified nuclear reactor" at the site, about 85 miles (137 kilometers) northwest of Las Vegas.

The goal of the project is to develop a safe, compact and reliable source of electricity for future manned and unmanned missions to the moon, Mars and other places beyond the Earth's orbit.

"As we are looking to explore the moon and eventually Mars, we are going to need a large power source not dependent on the sun, especially if we're going to live off the land," said James Reuter, NASA's acting associate administrator for the Space Technology Mission Directorate in Washington, D.C.

With a dominant showing in the District 2-5A golf championships, the Los Alamos High School boys’ golf team claimed a district championship, and four golfers were named All-District performers.

As a team, the Hilltoppers recorded a score of 315 at the championships, defeating second place Albuquerque Academy by 25 strokes. Española Valley followed in third place with a score of 435, Del Norte came in fourth place with a score of 446 and Capital finished in fifth place with a score of 457.

This is the fifth consecutive district championship for the Hilltoppers, dating back to 2014.

After struggling a bit the previous two weeks, Henry Poston bounced back in a big way for LAHS, posting the best score at the event with a 74. His score was five strokes better than the second place finisher, his teammate Jacob Benelli, who scored a 79. The teammates were the only golfers to post scores under 80 for the day.

Hilltoppers Sean Rau and Davis Johnson finished tied for fourth place with scores of 81 to round out the team score for LAHS.

Following a successful regular season, the Los Alamos baseball team begins the 2018 State Baseball Championships today against an Artesia High School team that will provide a great challenge to the Hilltoppers.

Artesia, the No. 5 seed in the playoffs, went 16-10 this season overall and 9-3 in District 4-5A. After a tight district race against Goddard, Artesia finished as the runners-up, as Goddard went 10-2 in district play to claim the title and earn the No. 1 seed in the State Baseball Championships.

In head-to-head match-ups, Artesia went 2-3 against Goddard.

The teams split the four games in district play, with Goddard also winning 3-2 in the Rio Rancho Tournament in late March.

Like most good teams, Artesia is full of good players, and does not rely on a particular player to win. As a team, the Bulldogs bat .329, and have pitched to a 3.78 ERA.

Throughout the season, the team’s best batter has been Taylor Null, who batted .560 this season, with 42 hits and 24 RBI’s.

He hit nine doubles, two triples and two home runs this season, scoring 26 runs.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — A former New Mexico Democratic official is calling for a Democratic congressional candidate to withdraw from the race for allegedly failing to address sexual misconduct claims during her tenure as head of the state party.

Former New Mexico Democratic National Committee Platform committeewoman Nicole Bagg plans to detail her accusations during a news conference Thursday and demand that Deb Haaland quit her quest for an open congressional seat in central New Mexico.

The claim is yet another sexual misconduct case rocking the Democratic Party of New Mexico. Other accusations have already forced another chairman to resign.

Haaland served as chairwoman of the Democratic Party of New Mexico from 2015 to 2017. She's seeking to become the nation's first Native American woman elected to Congress. Her campaign plans to issue a statement later Thursday.

The company hired by the Energy Department to clean up legacy waste at the Los Alamos National Laboratory said it is now ready to begin what it was hired to do.

Tuesday, the contractor, N3B, announced that it had finished with the contract’s transition phase.

Since December, N3B was busy coordinating with the Department of Energy, inspecting cleanup areas, establishing security and safety protocols and hiring workers as part of the transition phase.

The Department of Energy hired contractor N3B to clean up waste generated by the laboratory through 1999 in December 2017. N3B has hired 310 people for the $1.39 billion cleanup contract.

Over 230 of those workers have already been working on legacy cleanup at the Los Alamos National Laboratory or have had prior work experience at LANL.

“We put together a great team, with a vast amount of experience in cleanup from around the DOE complex,” said Nick Lombardo, N3B president and program manager. “We bring that nationwide knowledge to bear at LANL. I am proud of my management team for the work they have done to get us to this point and ready to start the important work of EM-LA (Environmental Management field office).”

Jess Clark believes that when it comes to preventing sexual assaults we all should be involved.

That was the message Clark, the education and prevention manager at Solace Crisis Treatment Center in Santa Fe, gave Friday morning to a crowd of approximately 40 people at the Bystander Intervention Workshop held at the University of New Mexico-Los Alamos.

The workshop was a collaborative effort between Solace Crisis Treatment Center and the UNM-LA grant from the Office on Violence Against Women (OVW).

UNM-LA’s Dr. Kristy Nadler was awarded the grant from the OVW at the U.S. Department of Justice. The OVW grant provides $300,000 over three years to organize effective sexual misconduct prevention, education and response for the UNM-LA community.

The message Clark brought to the group was that “we all have a part to play in sexual assault prevention,” and that it starts by “intervening in small moments, like jokes or off-hand comments.”

Clark said putting a stop to those jokes and off-hand comments is the best starting point, and that when people help stop those actions they can actually “help change the picture of would-be perpetrators and to show them that what they’re doing isn’t OK.”

In March and April Parker Knight was on stage in Los Alamos acting in a play put on by Los Alamos High School’s Olions Club.

This week she’s in Albuquerque working with other high school students on a production as part of the Enchantment Awards.

And if things go well in Albuquerque, she could find herself at the Jimmy Awards this summer in New York.

“It’s really exciting,” said the 16-year-old Los Alamos High School sophomore. “I’ve never performed on a stage this big before.”

Knight was one of 10 Best Actress selections from across the state by representatives of the Enchantment Awards after they saw her performance as Olive Ostrovsky in the 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee earlier this spring.

The representatives also selected 10 Best Actors as well as 10 each Best Supporting Actors and Actresses.

They started rehearsing in Albuquerque on Saturday and Sunday and will continue learning their roles, which include singing and dance routines, through the week. The performance is Saturday from 8-11 p.m. at the Popejoy Theater in Albuquerque.

The students will be judged live at the event with the winners moving on to this summer’s Jimmy Awards.

SANTA FE (AP) — An animal rights advocate and former political lobbyist went public with sexual harassment allegations Wednesday against a New Mexico state lawmaker, who cast himself as the victim of politically motivated lies.

In an open letter published online Wednesday, Laura Bonar accused Democratic Rep. Carl Trujillo of Santa Fe of inappropriate sexual advances as they worked on legislation in 2013 and 2014 when she was a lobbyist.

Bonar says she was shut out of the legislative process as a lobbyist for Albuquerque-based Animal Protection Voters after rejecting Trujillo's advances.

Trujillo issued a written statement to say that allegations against him are "lies of the worst sort," without mentioning Bonar by name.

Trujillo, who did not respond to an interview request, cast blame for the allegations on unnamed political opponents, saying they had hijacked the #MeToo movement against sexual misconduct for their own gain while undermining the cause of animal welfare.

Trujillo also invoked as evidence of credibility his security clearance at the Los Alamos National Laboratories, a federal nuclear research center.

Los Alamos County Councilor James Chrobocinski resigned from county council Tuesday, telling council members he had cancer and needed time to fight the battle and support his family.

The resignation was immediately effective.

At the close of the meeting Chrobocinski, reading from a prepared statement, said, “I have been diagnosed with cancer and I must take this time to win this battle and support my family.”

He said he plans to continue operating his real estate sales company, Zia Realty, “without any decrease in services,” and remain as president of the Los Alamos County Little League.

Councilor Pete Sheehey said Wednesday, “I didn’t always agree with James, but he was always good to work with. I could tell him, ‘Well, I can’t agree with that, but we can come halfway,’ and James was virtually always ready to try to find something to move forward with and I really appreciate that.”

The council must now move to fill the vacancy left by Chrobocinski’s resignation. Sheehey said he hopes the new councilor will have the same kind of problem-solving desire as Chrobocinski.

The Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Pit Technologies Division has developed a plan designed to prevent the mistakes workers made handling nuclear materials earlier this year, an inspection report from the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board said.

“They developed a criteria and review approach document to assess all of their operations through plant walk-downs and discussions with fissile material handlers. The assessment evaluated three areas: compliance and usability of the criticality safety postings; worker engagement and understanding; and best practices and areas of improvement from the perspective of the ‘voice of the worker,’” a statement in a March 30 inspection report said.

A lab spokesman said the review took two days, and that it was productive.

“The program conducted a safety review and a limited operational pause over a two-day period. Safety reviews are aimed at getting workers together to discuss best practices and safety issues,” the lab spokesman said.

The Pit Technologies Division also required that employees who weren’t involved in the operations take part as a way to “ensure objective evaluation.”